17 Aug 2020

 

 Botswana Innovation Hub (BIH) strives to offer beneficiaries advanced interventions upon funding.

Brand and communications manager, Ms Kemiso Ben confirmed in an interview with BOPA recently, that ‘all third call proposals shall undertake sequenced interventions to attain local and international market penetration’.

“So far, 10 projects have been funded at the tune of about P10 million and these are at different stages of implementation with the first cohort due for commissioning by October 2020,” Ms Ben explained.

She said the last cohort to be funded focused largely on developing solutions that would help government to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

“These companies are Creative Insights Solution for Remote Queuing System; First-Aid Counselling Solution for First Aid Counselling App; Spectrum Analytics Solution for Digital Social Welfare System; Corrugated Minds Solutions for Public Transport Passenger Alert System and Doctors E-Consult Solution for Doctor Consultation,” she indicated.

Currently, the companies are at developmental stage of envisaged solutions and some had identified supply contacts of model prototypes from various countries across the world, she said.

Ms Ben said as part of the value chain stimulation process, BIH was facilitating meetings between innovators and potential private and government off takers of the solutions envisaged to determine possible value adding assistance.

One of Botswana Innovation Fund (BIF) objectives is to generate registerable Intellectual Property (IP) while additional support for registration would be given to ideal beneficiaries through the BIH Technology Transfer Office.

In terms of costs associated with IP registration for the solutions, Ms Ben highlighted that additional costs for patents drafting and bankable feasibility studies shall be based purely on commercial model agreed with the business owners and would attract equity and debt financing.

She added that BIH had adopted the Technology and Innovation Support Centers model of the World Intellectual Property Organization as a primer to support local researchers and entrepreneurs to access local information and online resources that would help in developing new IP.

In view of the foregoing, Ms Ben underlined that the partnership agreement had been signed by five local universities that would assist with research and development of IP in Botswana.

Ms Ben said to this juncture, BIH had developed a process to support innovators to review IP potential and facilitate its registration.

She said they facilitated patent drafting and lodging with both local and regional patent offices, including facilitation of licensing a local patent to international bodies through already established networks.

“There are opportunities for capacity-building on patent drafting under different specialty areas locally.

There are additional partnerships that we have developed through the Southern Africa Research and Innovation Management Association for additional expertise,” she said.

Meanwhile, an interview with some beneficiaries from the third call for proposals revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic had negative impact in timely implementation of initial stages of planned project milestone activities.

The beneficiaries said some of the prototypes they employed in developing their envisaged solutions were found only in Asian countries, therefore the recently imposed travel ban halted their procurement processes for an extended period, which brought a delay in setting up. ENDS